Description

12 orbits is about drifting around, moving in circles and coloring on contact.
Also: Crushing up to 12 people at once. But in a friendly kind of way.

You could say it's a one button, local multiplayer bullet hell evasion game. But then there's also a lot of football, pong and Achtung die Kurve (Zatacka) in there.

The main challenge for 12 orbits was to get the most gameplay possible out of the most restrictive input requirements available. That means one button per player, not requiring that button to be held down, and not requiring button mashing. Because only that way can you actually play with many people at once on a keyboard or touchscreen, which mostly support only 3-5 inputs at a time.

The game is not as easy to master as it might seem. It actually works well as a competitive game, despite the control limitations. But it can also be explained quickly and the setup takes only a few seconds, even for 12 players at once.

All game modes adjust to any number of players, so 2 is enough to start. There are also practice modes that can be played with 1 to 12 players on one team, but that isn't the main attraction of this game.

There are four game modes to choose from:

◦ Multiball
(Teams)
Kind of like football, but with exploding goals and multiple balls at once, which change color all the time.

◦ Arena
Fill the arena with spheres of your own color and avoid those of your opponents. A bullet hell that constantly grows more intense.

◦ Trails
Collect spheres to grow longer than your opponents. Block their path and pay attention to your own, similar to Snake or Achtung die Kurve / Zatacka. On top of that, you also have the ability to shoot with your own spheres.

◦ Blizzard
(Teams)
Think Pong. But you play in teams, can roam freely on your side of the court, and have to defend against a whole shower of spheres at once.

History

12 orbits was developed by Roman Uhlig over the course of 3 years, alongside his computer science studies. It may have taken longer than expected, but he is still a little proud of it.

Features

Local competitive multiplayer for everyone at once. Anywhere. On anything.

4 vastly different game modes to choose from

Setup takes seconds, even for 12 players at once

The basic mechanics are simple and can be taught to a group quickly

...yet they provide you with a lot of room for competition and mastery